The Israel Under-18 team will tipoff against Croatia in Round of 16 European Championship action on Wednesday at 19:00 Israel time. After finishing the round robin group stage with a 2-1 record, the young blue-and-white will look to win their fourth game of the competition that will send them to the quarterfinals.

Should head coach Sharon Avrahami’s squad fall to Croatia in the knockout game, they will have to play in the classification/relegation part of the tournament. In the group stage, Israel defeated Lithuania and Sweden and lost to France in their opening games while Croatia recorded only one won over Poland while falling to Germany and Turkey.

To date, Shachar Doron leads the entire tournament in scoring with 20.3 points per game after having scored 31 in the win over Sweden, while Ori Cohen tops the 3-point leader list shooting 70% from beyond the arc.

“We knew that the first stage of the tournament would be tough with games against Lithuania and France,” Avrahami said. “We did have a big win over Lithuania but France proved to be formidable and we have seen that they are one of the strongest teams here. Croatia is a good team and we lost to them prior to the championships in a very close exhibition game. We will prepare as best as we can in order to win and advance to the quarterfinals.”